Sand in Iraq, Ice Time in Korea for App State Vet

      Another in a series of stories about veterans of the war on terrorism who are now players and coaches with club hockey teams in the South.     
     A veteran of the Iraq War, Florida-born, Minnesota-raised Casey Krasen, a left wing and the captain of the Appalachian State hockey team, actually played some ice hockey while overseas. Not when he was stationed in Iraq, of course. There, the U.S. Air Force senior airman logged three months at the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division's headquarters in Tikrit in early 2004. He worked with a team of fire support officers.
     The chance to play hockey came during a one-year tour in Korea later in his Air Force hitch. "Actually, there was a rink outside the gate to the base (Camp Red Cloud, home of the Army's 2nd Infantry Division). I played three or four times. It was interesting playing with some of the South Koreans. They enjoyed having me and a couple of other guys out there with them. They thought we were special," says Krasen.
     "They weren't physical. It was like playing in a no-check men's league. It was different. I had been out of the game so long, but that got me wanting to play again." Today, 2-1/2 years after his honorable discharge from the Air Force, Krasen is in his third season with the App State Mountaineers, who lead the Blue Ridge Hockey Conference's Carolina Division with a 5-0-0 record and are 10-6-0 overall, with nine of those wins coming in the 10 games leading into the semester break.
     Krasen, whose dad and grandfather own a construction company in Charlotte, played youth and high school hockey in Minnesota. After the family moved to North Carolina, he played for Team Carolina's AA midget squad.
     He kicked back for a year following graduation from high school, then joined the Air Force. Other than basic training in Texas and tactical air command and control school at Hurlburt Field in Florida, Krasen spent his four-year Air Force enlistment assigned to Army units at Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Campbell, Ky., as well as in Iraq and Korea.
     After his discharge, he played in a men's summer league in Charlotte to prep for trying out for the App State team. "I'm very pleased with our progress," Krasen says. "We've grown a lot in the three years I've been here. We don't have available ice in close proximity [to the university's Boone, N.C., campus], but the heart and desire of these guys to play the game is tremendous."
     Midway through the Mountaineers' 9-1 turnaround stretch were three wins in four games at the Charlotte Shootout, including a 2-1win over Virginia Commonwealth, which leads the BRHC's Atlantic Division, and a second-place finish behind Canisius of Buffalo, N.Y. App State's ninth win in that run was a 6-4 decision over the South Eastern Collegiate Hockey Conference's Georgia Ice Dogs in Duluth, Ga. "The guys weren't happy about travelling four hours to play one game, but they came out strong to get the win," he says.
     Krasen, 26, and a senior at App State, is studying construction management, an education that would serve him well should he join the family business after graduation.